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Libya Protests Spur Shake-Up in Interim Government

Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, center, chairman of the Transitional National Council, was confronted by protesters on Saturday who forced their way into the interim government's office in Benghazi.Credit
Esam Omran Al-Fetori/Reuters

Libya’s post-Qaddafi transitional government faced a political crisis Sunday after protesters ransacked its offices in Benghazi, highlighting growing nationwide unease with its leadership and triggering a shake-up in which the governing council’s No. 2 official resigned and several members were suspended.

For months, youth groups with a range of complaints have been protesting against the Transitional National Council in Benghazi, the eastern city whose protests sparked the nine-month revolt and which once served as the rebel capital. Protests have cropped up elsewhere, too, including in Tripoli, the capital, where activists have erected a small tent city across from the prime minister’s office.

Protesters are demanding more transparency from the transitional council, which holds executive power and is tasked with overseeing the election of a constituent assembly to draft a new Constitution. It is dominated by figures from the eastern rebel movement, much to the suspicion of other regional factions, and there are accusations, too, that many of its members are tainted by past ties, real or suspected, with the government of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi.

On Saturday night, those frustrations boiled over when a crowd of mostly young men attacked the council’s offices in Benghazi, tossing a grenade, smashing windows and forcing their way into the building while the council’s chairman, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, was inside.

The spark appeared to be the online release of a draft election law to govern the selection of the 200-member constituent assembly. Activists said it was prepared without consultation or public oversight and that its winner-take-all rules would encourage Libyans to vote along tribal lines or for rich or prominent citizens in their region, and undercut those seeking to form new parties.

Seeking to contain the fallout from the attack, Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga, the transitional council’s deputy chief, resigned Sunday, telling the Arabic satellite channel Al Jazeera, “My resignation is for the benefit of the nation and is required at this stage.”

Speaking to reporters in Benghazi on Sunday, Mr. Abdel-Jalil warned that continued protests could lead the country down a perilous path and pleaded with protesters to give the government more time.

“We are going through a political movement that can take the country to a bottomless pit,” Reuters quoted Mr. Abdel-Jalil as saying. “There is something behind these protests that is not for the good of the country.

“The people have not given the government enough time, and the government does not have enough money,” Mr. Abdel-Jalil said. “Maybe there are delays, but the government has only been working for two months. Give them a chance, at least two months.”

The interim government suspended several members from Benghazi and announced that it would form a council of religious figures to investigate government officials and council members accused of corruption or ties to the Qaddafi government. It also delayed the official release of the election law.

Both the incident itself and the leadership’s response were met with widespread anger in Benghazi, according to Salwa Bugaighis, a lawyer and political activist who was a leading figure in the uprising against Colonel Qaddafi.

“We are worried,” she said. “We are afraid that maybe it becomes worse.”

Ms. Bugaighis said that the protesters in Benghazi were particularly angry about allegations that millions of dollars — and possibly billions — in government money was unaccounted for.

“They want transparency. They want people from the Qaddafi regime to go,” she said. “If there’s no transparency, everything will collapse.”

A transitional council member from Benghazi, Fathi Baaja, denied that he or anyone else had been suspended, despite widespread reports to the contrary. He said an Islamist faction — “religious groups and mosque preachers” — on the Benghazi local council had pushed for the suspensions but said that “they have no right to suspend us.”

Saying he was among those who had set up the council, Mr. Baaja accused the Islamist rivals of being Qaddafi sympathizers.

“They used to convince people they had no right to revolt against Qaddafi, the father of the country. They said we had no right to go against the head of state, the caliph,” Mr. Baaja said. “I never heard their voices say no to Qaddafi, and I never put myself in the same place as them.”

Protests have taken place in the city of Misurata as well, which is run by a rival leadership faction and where officials said they were planning to hold elections for a new local council in February, without the blessing of the national council.

“Everywhere there have been sit-ins and demonstrations” against the council, said Mohamed Benrasali, a spokesman for the Misurata council. People are “accusing it of no transparency and dragging its feet and not taking any actions for transitional justice and many, many issues,” he said, adding, “We feel that the head of the regime has changed, but the rest of the regime is in place.”

Both Saturday’s protest and its political fallout demonstrated the challenges Libya faces, said Fred Abrahams, a special adviser on Libya for Human Rights Watch.

“Ousting Qaddafi will prove more straight-forward than getting a representative and transparent government to replace him,” he said.

Critics of the interim government also complain that its performance has faltered on even the nuts-and-bolts level.

Basic services have yet to be restored in some areas, while towns seen as sympathetic to Colonel Qaddafi, like Surt and Bani Walid, remain in ruins after months of fighting.

The interim government has struggled to exert authority even in Tripoli, where the streets are largely controlled by a patchwork of regional militias whose members defer to their own commanders, not government security forces.

Mr. Abdel-Jalil also accepted the resignation of the head of the Benghazi Local Council, Saleh el-Ghazal, an appointed figure whose replacement he pledged would be elected.

But on Sunday, authorities postponed the planned unveiling of the country’s election law, which has been mired in controversy. A draft of the law released on Jan. 2 was criticized for barring dual-nationals from running for office, in a country where scores of political activists were forced into exile.

It also set a 10 percent quota for women in Parliament, which feminist activists called “insulting.” Rather than raise the quota, a revised draft released last week announced that the quota would be abolished entirely.

A version of this article appears in print on January 23, 2012, on page A8 of the New York edition with the headline: Protests in Benghazi Shake Libya’s Interim Council. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe